Back in 1927, Hermann Hesse in Steppenwolf likened the hidden layers of the human personality to an onion: “made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads.” “Reveal,” which opens at the New Art Center in Newton September 11, shows five artists who use the idea and/or the physical process of building up and then peeling back multiple layers to draw viewers into their work. Curated by participating artist Kathy A. Halamka, whose real and imaginary pictures of her descendants are revealed through layers of photocopy transfers and charcoal on birch plywood, the show also includes Erica Daborn’s drawings on found book pages, Samantha Fields installations that pull up the rug on domestic objects and spaces, C.J. Lori’s multi-dimensional paintings, and Judith Stone’s multimedia cityscapes.

Born in Boston in 1905, artist Loïs Mailou Jones created works inspired by American, African-American, Caribbean, African, and European designs and themes over her long and prolific career (she died in 1998, age 92), from still lifes and street scenes made in Paris in the 1930s to Haitian portraits and abstracted African-based images. Jones worked in media ranging from textile design to book illustration, and she was an influential teacher of painting and design from 1930 to 1977 at Howard University. “Loïs Mailou Jones: The Early Works, Paintings and Patterns 1927–1937” opens at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts September 15, with textile designs and studies that she created following her graduation from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1927.

Our subjective experience of landscape, whether seen through the window of a speeding train or while trekking through snow, is the focus of Sharon Harper’s photography and video. The landscape, examined — or evoked — in terms of sound, text, and sculpture, has also informed work by artist Helen Mirra. These two artists, both newly appointed professors in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard, share the bill in “Sharon Harper and Helen Mirra” which opens September 11 at the Carpenter Center.

Thanks to the efforts of artist/curator/gallery director Sand T, the arts scene in Malden has flourished in recent years. On September 9, the First Parish in Malden, in collaboration with Sand T, is opening a new exhibition space within the church, the Gallery at Elm Street. The inaugural exhibition, “MALDEN Contemporary,” features work by 22 Malden artists including Pamela Pritzker, YoungSuk Suh, and Hilary Tolan.

Id vicious Money is a dominant topic of conversation in the art world even when there isn’t a global financial crisis.

Land ho! The Los Angeles site of the Center for Land Use Interpretation keeps a low physical profile.

The devil in the details It’s hard to imagine stopping to look at drawings that don’t coalesce till you let them pull you in and spin you around a bit.

Utopia station The grimy surfaces of walls, sidewalks, and utility poles in neighborhoods of San Juan have replaced canvas as a medium for Puerto Rican artist Rafael Trelles.

Holiday, it would be so nice! The Museum of Fine Arts offers a full-out festive immersion approach to the impending holidays this year — a line of attack that, in keeping with the contemporary spirit of art, embraces performing arts, multimedia, and site-specific.

Steering off course We recommend the course taught by the indie filmmaker, the course inspired by a Daily Show regular, and the course considered “experimental.”

Who are you? I’d hazard that when most of us think of pictures with “hidden meanings,” we don’t envision portraits, a genre that usually entails straight-ahead representations of, well, heads, at least.

Super graphics There must be a better word than “graffiti” to describe the site-specific, often text-embracing, street-smart art of the intrepid artists who use their environment as their canvas, plastering buildings, street signs, decaying walls, and skinny lamp posts with imagery by way of posters, stickers, markers, and spray paint.

Hand made Eight years after Loïs Mailou Jones’s death, School of the Museum of Fine Arts curator Joanna Soltan is proclaiming her to be “among the most significant African-American artists of the 20th century.”

Break on through (to the other side) Rachel Perry Welty sees art where many of us see annoying little things to be thrown away or deleted: the funny-shaped plastic tabs cleverly invented to close the bag around a loaf of bread; the identifying stickers found on most fruit; answering-machine messages left at wrong numbers.

Skin deep The facial and body tattoos of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people were originally chiseled into the skin by means of an albatross bone and vegetable-based pigments.

THE NATURE OF THE BEAST | September 10, 2008 In the world of graphic novelist Kevin Hooyman, whose show opens at Proof Gallery on September 13, packed line drawings take you deep into strange and fantastical scenes.

I AM I SAID | September 03, 2008 Tufts University Art Gallery presents “Empire And Its Discontents,” which opens September 15 with work by 11 artists tied to previously colonized regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.